


Whisper Words of Wisdom

by PrairieChzHead (msannomalley)



Series: Lost Causes [6]
Category: The Trixie Belden Mysteries - Julie Campbell Tatham & Kathryn Kenny
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Reference to another character's attempted suicide, reference to past suicide attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-28
Updated: 2017-11-28
Packaged: 2019-02-08 01:18:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12853626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/msannomalley/pseuds/PrairieChzHead
Summary: The aftermath of events mentioned in the epilogue of "Little Wing" and Michelle comes to a decision about what she wants to do with her life.





	Whisper Words of Wisdom

_**When the broken hearted people** _  
_**Living in the world agree** _  
_**There will be an answer** _  
_**Let it be.** _  
_**For though they may be parted** _  
_**There is still a chance that they will see** _  
_**There will be an answer** _  
_**Let it be.** _  
_**\--The Beatles** _

 

**Michelle**

**Monday, December 24, 1973  
Harrisburg, Nebraska**

When I make up my mind to do things, I do them. Sometimes. I made up my mind that I was going to come back to the ranch and stay for good, all because of this guy I met last summer, whom I happened to fall in love with when I wasn't expecting to fall in love with anyone, especially someone who is about as messed up as I am.

Nobody starts out messed up, at least that's what some people say. You get messed up because of things that happen to you. I got messed up because my parents died, my brother didn't want me around so he left me in the hands of an individual who hated children and was a religious zealot, and I spent a good chunk of the last five or six years trying to find someone who did want me around. I thought I had it when I hooked up with Barry and the band. But things aren't always as they seem. I had to come back to Harrisburg, a town so small, it's beyond podunk, to find what I was looking for.

I made up my mind to go right to the cabin. But it didn't happen that way. There's just something about Christmas that brings out the sentimental fool in all of us. I just had to look in that window and get myself all worked up over things. I hate the holidays. I absolutely despise them. All this bullshit about togetherness and family and warm fuzzy feelings. That's what it is. Bullshit. Not every family is like the goddamn fucking Nelsons or Cleavers or the Bradys, and society seems to ignore that. People like me, people like Dan, who don't have parents or families, are the red-headed step-children of the world.

I ended up in the stables, next to the horses, bawling my eyes out and wishing I could be seven again or just wishing that my parents were still alive, because things would have turned out so differently. I know they would have. My mom and dad loved me. Dick doesn't. I don't think he ever did. He was the Golden Boy, the only child, the center of attention. I was an "oops", but my parents loved me anyway. I think Dick hates me because I took a lot of attention away from him. I only realized, with the benefit of hindsight, that my older brother had been a spoiled brat.

When I stopped crying and composed myself, I went to the cabin. I knew my eyes were all red from crying and it wouldn't do for Dan to see this. He doesn't know that I'm here. I didn't tell him I was coming because I wanted it to be a surprise. Yesterday was his birthday and tomorrow is Christmas, and I thought that me coming here and telling him that I'm staying here for good would be better than any present I could buy him. I know that's what he wants to hear. I know that's what he wants most of all right now.

Leaving the road and rearranging my life was not as hard a decision as I thought it would be. I think I was ready to leave it and settle down some time ago. I was just looking for a reason to do it. And now I have one. At first, I thought it was going to be hard to make up my mind because Barry and the other boys in the band gave me whatever I wanted whenever I wanted it. And I was a "regular", meaning I hung out with them permanently. Being a regular means your "somebody" as far as groupies go and that's what I guess you strive for. You know, like that chick who makes the plaster casts of rock stars' dicks? She's "somebody". Being somebody also means that you don't have to fuck roadies, either. I hated that, because they had all the power. Sure, I can get you back to meet Page and Plant, but first you gotta suck my big greasy cock first and then I'll think about it.

Most of what I got from the band was material things like booze or drugs or sex or money. That was stuff I didn't need, but they gave it to me freely because I was "somebody" to them. But they expected things in return because they were big stars and they had egos and they knew how to play people because of that.

I had a bad time last summer in Portland and then I found myself back in Nebraska. I usually tried to stay away but I kept going back because my brother had the sense, for once in his life, to settle down and marry someone who acted like she gave a damn. Mary worries a lot. I think she has ulcers or something. If she doesn't, she will someday. She tried to be a mother to me, but me being seventeen at the time she married my brother, who was thirty-two at the time, it was too late for that. I was already too far down the road I had just turned onto. I came back when I did so she would know that I was still alive. Physically alive, that is. Since Dick and I don't get along, I crashed in the empty cabin on the other side of the stables. It's out of sight from the main house and it was there because my father liked to have someone living in working for him. Dick didn't care, so it sat empty. Last summer, though, it wasn't. Dan was living there.

Even though I was stoned when I walked up to him, I will always remember that night. He was sitting on the steps and he was already kind of drunk. I was at a distance and I didn't see the lost look on his face. I just saw a shirtless, dark haired guy sitting on my steps who looked pretty damned hot and I wanted to fuck him right then and there. I went up to him and I introduced myself and I told him what I did. He didn't chase me away, nor did he get that look in his eye that guys get when they find out that you do put out. I stayed for a week and I spent most of my time with him. In bed, out of bed, didn't matter. Something clicked. Something clicked between us and I didn't want to leave. But I got scared and left anyway. I didn't see him again until about a month ago. I wasn't planning on seeing him again, but it didn't work out that way.

I left for two months and I ended up in drug rehab.  Twice.  Drug rehab was hell, especially when you're going through the withdrawals.  But I learned some things about myself and what I was doing.  I realized some things about the life I had been living.  Wandering around gets old after awhile. You can never make them happy. They don't want you because they like you. They want you because they can have you and they know it. And they gave me stuff. I was only wanted because I put out. Dan gave me something else entirely. He was the one who made me feel important and cherished and wanted because of me. Me. It's like he sees something that nobody else does and he actually wants to be around stupid little fuck up Michelle. I shouldn't question it. I should just be happy that someone actually wants to be around me.

I fell off the wagon about a month after I left rehab and I ended up back there again.  This time, though, I also did the twelve step thing.   I've been pretty good since then.  I only slipped a couple of times.  I haven't had a drink since the first day of Dan's visit last November.  I haven't smoked a joint or snorted cocaine since last summer.  I've been completely sober for a month. 

As I'm walking up to the door, I can picture what's about to happen. When Dan sees me, his eyes will light up like they did last November when he came to Denver. I swear that they did just that. I saw it, but I didn't realize it until later because I had gotten it in my head to tell him that he was better off finding someone else and I was nervous about seeing him again. Then he'll say something like, "I thought you weren't coming here". Then I say, "I changed my mind." And then he kisses me or I kiss him or something. And then I tell him that I'm not leaving and he's all happy and then we end up in bed and we make up for one month of being apart and for what telephone conversations lack.

It's not about sex, though. It isn't. I just love being around him. Really, I do.

When I left the barn, I noticed that it had started snowing, these big, fluffy white flakes coming down. My eyes have that swollen, tired feeling that you get after you have a good long cry. I wasn't about to go to the main house to take care of that. I can just picture it, me barging in on their little Christmas celebration. "Don't mind me. I just bawled my eyes out with the horses and I need to use the bathroom. Nothing to see here. Go about your business." I scooped my hand into the snow, feeling the wet as the snow melted against the heat of my hand, and then I suddenly realized that I left my gloves in the car. I closed my eyes and bathed them with it, hoping that would do the trick. I didn't want Dan to know that I'd been crying. I'm supposed to be happy, damn it. Think happy thoughts, Michelle.

When I reached the door, for some reason, I felt compelled to knock. I never knocked. Not even last summer. But now I felt I had to. I could see him through the door's window, sitting on the couch and I grew excited. I was going to see Dan again. I was going to see him again and for every day to come for the rest of my life. I wasn't going anywhere, well, maybe except to the store when I had to, or to that clinic in Denver when I need birth control pills because they just give them to you and they don't give you a hard time about it like they do here.

I saw him look in my direction and then get up from the couch. It was all I could do to not break the door down and throw myself at him. I could feel myself smiling. Then he opened the door.

I stopped smiling.

That lost look was back on his face. And it scared me. It really scared me.

"Dan?" I said, my voice small. Those eyes of his, those dark, dark eyes of his, so full of misery. They didn't light up. They tried to, and I could see that, but something was very, very wrong. I could feel my heart being torn in half right inside my chest.

"Michelle," he said in a broken voice.

I don't remember rushing into the cabin or closing the door, but the next thing I knew he was in my arms and he buried his face in my hair and he started crying. My hair grew damp with his tears, but that didn't matter. None of it mattered.

I held onto him so tightly, as if I were afraid he was going to slip away from me if I didn't. I could feel him shaking as the sobs tore through him.

I let him cry. I couldn't stop it if I wanted to, just like with what happened to me earlier in the evening. I couldn't make myself stop crying if I wanted to. I don't think he could stop it, either. My mind raced with questions.

What happened?

Was it another nightmare?

Did Dick say something to him?

Did someone from back home find him?

When the worst of it had passed, when he had composed himself, he looked at me. Those dark eyes, the ones I get so lost in, were damp and he looked at me with such a mixture of sadness and of amazement and even a touch of awe.

I took him by the hand and led him to the couch. We sat down and I wouldn't let go of his hand. It felt necessary not to break any physical contact with him. It was like he was on the edge of a chasm, and if I let go, I'd lose him.

I had to ask. I had to know what happened. But yet, I dreaded it at the same time. If it made him cry, it had to be bad. Dan was someone who could hide his feelings very well, unless he was drunk.  I'm the same way. 

"What happened?" I asked him.

"My friend, the one in the wheelchair, tried to kill himself two days ago," he said in that same broken voice he used when he spoke my name.

"Oh God." I felt tears springing into my eyes. I knew of the guilt Dan carried around where this friend of his was concerned. They were best friends, they even served together in Vietnam. And his friend came home with half his legs and confined to a wheelchair and Dan blamed himself. Dan said it was because he was there when it happened and he could have stopped it. But I think it's survivor's guilt. When Dan came home, he walked off the plane. His friend had to be wheeled off of it.

This also reminded me of something else that I'd rather forget about.

"Mart tried to swallow sixteen sleeping pills," Dan went on. "His kid brother found him and called an ambulance." He looked at the floor as he spoke, rather than look at me. That was normal Dan behavior. When he would tell me something that was hard for him to say, he'd look at the floor, at the ground, at the table, anywhere but at me. "How old is he now? Fifteen?"

I didn't answer. I didn't know the kid. I decided to let Dan talk. I didn't know what I should do right now. God, I hoped that I wasn't failing him.

"You know," he said. "I still picture Bobby as a six year old. It's been so long since I've seen him. I keep picturing this six year old kid walking into his brother's room and finding him there." He hunched over forward, resting his chin in his hands and his elbows on his knees, but he kept looking at the floor. I put my hand on his shoulder because I didn't want to lose him to the chasm.

"How did you find out?" I asked him. That was the only thing that would come out of my mouth.

Dan turned his head and I saw the bitter look in his eyes. "That's the beauty of it," he said. I didn't miss the anger in his voice. "I decided to call my uncle tonight and this is what he fucking tells me."

Oh, dear God. I knew that had to have taken a lot for him to do, because he didn't want anyone back in New York to know where he was.

He caught my expression. "Yeah, that's right," he said. "I shouldn't have even bothered, you know. I was waiting for you to call me, but I decided to call him first because it was Christmas and I was feeling a little sentimental."

I replied with the first thought that came to my mind. "I was feeling a sentimental enough to stop by the main house first and look through the living room window. And because I kept seeing my parents in there, I spent two hours bawling my eyes out in the stables." I heard a hardness in my own voice and I tempered it. This wasn't the time to compare heartbreaks. "Otherwise I would have been here earlier."

And then maybe you wouldn't have called your uncle. Or maybe you would have, but I would have been here when he told you this.

"I thought you weren't coming back for the holidays," he said. He settled back into the couch and started to absently pick at some invisible errant thread on his jeans.

"I changed my mind," I replied. Maybe he's not ready to talk about this yet. He's changing the subject. Maybe that wasn't such a bad thing.

"What made you change your mind?" he asked me.

"You."

Dan turned and looked at me. He  _really_  looked at me.

This isn't how I wanted to tell him this. Hi honey, sorry about your friend, but guess what? I'm staying for good. It just seemed wrong to say it now.

"I missed you," I explained. "And I didn't want to be alone."

"Oh." He tried to smile at me, but all he could manage was this sort of sad, half-smile.

"It was a supposed to be a surprise," I went on, trying to explain more, even though I didn't have to. I felt like I had to justify this topic of conversation. "I wanted to come yesterday and surprise you for your birthday, but I couldn't get away until today." Because stupid Barry said that I had to stay until the 24th because he couldn't get a refund on the room otherwise. And stupid me, I listened to him. Barry thinks I'm an idiot for giving up "the road" to be with a man for more than one night. He thought I was turning into "one of them".

"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked me.

"Like I said, it was supposed to be a surprise. And my timing stinks, too." I barely got the words out when I yawned.

"Tired?" he asked me. It had been a long drive here and an emotional day. I was drained.

"Yeah," I said. "But my stuff is still in the car and I really should bring it in." I had most of my record collection in there and the cold wasn't good for them.

"Want some help?" he asked, an eagerness to his voice that was a much better sound to my ears than the broken, bitter voice.

"Yeah. I'd like that."

I hadn't taken my coat off after I got in the house and I was roasting. I didn't think to take my coat off because Dan was more important at the moment than my stupid winter jacket. He grabbed his coat and we went outside into the dark and the cold. Since I parked kind of out of the way, so Dick wouldn't see me pull in, I had to show him where my car was.

I drive a VW Beetle. It's sort of this cream/faded yellow color. And I had that thing packed with everything I owned. In a normal car, it would have fit in the trunk and some of the back seat, but the car I drive is so small, it was packed to the gills with boxes and bags.

I opened the door, causing the dome light to go on. "Jesus, Michelle," Dan said. "Did you bring everything you own with you? Just how long were you planning to stay anyway?" He grabbed a box.

"Forever. If that's okay with you." Great. Just toss off some cheesy one liner from a cheesy romance novel, Michelle. That's being real sensitive.

Dan nearly dropped the box he was holding. Thankfully, it just had clothes in it. "You're staying for good?"

"That was the plan," I replied. "Unless you have objections."

"No," he said. "I don't." In the dark, I could see hints of the emotions playing on his face. He started to move closer to me, but then he realized he was still holding a box, so he put that down on the roof of the car. Then he took me into his arms so quickly and held me so tight, it startled me, but I relaxed in his arms. It felt so good to be there. It felt like I belonged there.

 

**Dan**

**Tuesday, December 25, 1973  
Three a.m.**

I was dead tired, but I couldn't sleep. I didn't want to sleep. I was too afraid of the nightmares I knew I would have if I did go to sleep. I watched the TV test pattern and held a bottle of whisky in my hand.

Michelle fell asleep about an hour ago. She had been trying to stay awake for my sake, but I guess the drive and everything else was too much for her. She has her head in my lap and some of her hair is sort of spread out, like this earthy colored silky curtain.

I love her hair. I don't think about hair much, but I love her hair. There's just something about it, the way it feels in my fingers, the color. Her hair is brown, with hints of red in it that show up when the sunlight hits it. It's not fiery red, just this nice, earthy reddish brown color. It sort of goes in loose waves down to about the middle of her back and it's thick and it smells nice. She wears bangs, and knowing her, it's probably because everyone else doesn't.

We brought her things in and that's when she told me she was staying. Right now, the boxes are piled up against one of the walls because we were too tired to sort through them and put them in their places. I guess that's what I need to see, all her worldly possessions sitting in my living room. She said she was staying for good. I want her to stay. I don't want her to leave. For some reason, she has this power to make me actually feel good, to feel happy for once, and I'll be damned if I'm going to give that up.

It's ironic how in the span of about two hours or so, I get the worst news I could possibly get and I get the best news I could possibly get. My best friend tries to kill himself and my girlfriend tells me she's staying.

Maybe I shouldn't call her my girlfriend. I don't know what other word to use. It's not like we actually started things out like normal people do. But I love her and I don't know what else to call her. Girlfriend seems like such an inadequate word to describe what Michelle is to me.

The dark thoughts are returning and I'm holding a whiskey bottle in my hand because maybe if I get blindingly drunk, I'll pass out and go to sleep and not have dreams of any kind.

This whole thing with Mart is my fault. I ditched my friend because I felt too guilty to even look at him. Uncle Bill said there was a note and my name was in it.

My best friend hates me. Everyone else back there hates me, too. The only person who doesn't hate me is currently using my lap as her pillow, but it's only going to be a matter of time before I fuck something up royally and she ends up hating me, too.

I would die if Michelle ever hated me. I would just die inside. Again.

This guilt consumed me. I was starting to feel better, and then this had to happen. I can feel it coming back in waves, like some caustic acid, eating at me. This guilt is what drove me to leave New York in the first place. I was originally going to drive out to the West Coast, but Fate decided that my car was going to break down in the middle Bum Fuck Egypt, also known as Western Nebraska. Fate also decided to place a guy by the name of Dick O' Brien on that same road and Fate told him to stop and help me out. He gave me a ride, paid to have my car towed, and offered me a job when he learned that not only I was Irish, but I had also served my country. He never asked if I worked with cattle before. Just being an Irish vet was good enough for him. I was going to turn him down, but my car was a total loss, and I ended up staying.

At first, I thought Dick was okay. He was opinionated and he thought the words that came from his mouth were holy writ, but I mainly tuned him out. If he ever had to go to Vietnam, he'd be singing a different tune. That's the problem with some of these older, conservative types. They run off at the mouth about things they know nothing about, like the glories of war. There's nothing glorious about watching your best friend get maimed and hearing him scream in agony and smelling his flesh burning and seeing his blood spatter everything around him.

I thought Michelle was exaggerating when she first told me about her brother, but right before Thanksgiving, I learned that she wasn't. He decided to play the concerned father and he warned me to stay away from his sister should she ever show up at the ranch. But he was a few months too late for that. The words he used when he talked about her made me sick, because I knew that she wasn't really like that. Michelle puts up this front, this tough facade, this sort of bad girl image and she will hold you at arms' length, but I saw through that right away. It's now to the point where she can't put it up in front of me anymore.

I think this whole thing with me and her is Fate. It has to be. I can't think of any other reason why we would end up together. But she saw through me, too. I don't know how she did it, but she did. She listens to me. She will never understand what it was like to be over there, and I think she knows that, but she listens anyway and even though she said she was against the war, she doesn't condemn me for having fought in it. She says she's in no position to judge anyone.

I'm not a big believer in Fate, but I think that's what it is. Fate decided I needed her or someone like her. Fate must have decided to take pity on me and let me feel good about something for once.

Fate is also a manipulative bitch. Just when I was starting to feel better, this has to happen. God forbid I should ever get to be happy. When things are going good, I get sucker punched in the gut with something bad. Like my parents dying, like getting drafted. Like my best friend swallowing sleeping pills so he could die.

If Fate was being a cruel mistress as of late, something else put Michelle at my door at the moment when I wished she were here, when I needed her to be here. Some people believe that angels appear to them, and well, that's what she was. An angel. My angel.

I don't think I can live without her anymore.

I take a drink out of the bottle I'm holding, and then another one. My mind is filled with "what if's".

What if I hadn't left New York? Then Mart wouldn't have done this.

If I hadn't left, what would I be doing now? I don't know. I know that I wouldn't have my old gamekeeper's assistant job, because I can't stomach working for the Wheelers. Those damned fucking privileged Wheelers who have all the money and get all the breaks in life and get what they want so easily while I have to work my ass off for what little I do have. They don't get drafted. Daddy buys their way out of it. The only other place that pays decent is International Pine, and I can't stomach working for them, either. They nearly took my home away.

But if I hadn't left New York, I never would have met Michelle. This woman who is sleeping in my lap, who decided to rearrange her life for me. Me. I can't compare with whatever the lure of being "on the road" is, but she chose me over that and it astounds me.

What if I hadn't called Uncle Bill tonight? Then I'd be blissfully ignorant. I'd be happy and I would have been able to take Michelle's news the way I wanted to, the way I should have, the way she deserved to have it taken. And right now, we'd be in my bed, naked and sweaty, and I'd be showing her my gratitude over her staying with me. I don't think she had what happened tonight in mind when she decided that she was going to tell me.

My fingers found their way into her hair again. I just can't resist touching it. It's so soft. Just like the rest of her. I drank some more and the whisky was making me feel warm inside.

It couldn't have been easy for her to decide to settle down. Michelle is the kind of person who lives life by the seat of her pants, going where ever the wind takes her, to use the old saying. When she said she had some thinking to do, I got scared because I thought  maybe she was having second thoughts about me. She said she wasn't. She said she had some thinking to do about herself and that she probably wasn't going to make it back here for Christmas. Instead, she decided to surprise me, and if it weren't for that damned phone call, she would have pulled it off, too.

I attempted to set the bottle back on the table, but the sound of glass bumping wood woke up Michelle. She rubbed her eyes, sat up, and looked at me first, then at the whisky.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Getting drunk," I said, hearing the slurring in my speech.

"You should be sleeping," she said. "You look like hell, Dan."

"Can't sleep," I said. "Won't sleep."

"Why?" she asked me.

"Nightmares." I didn't have to say anything else. She knows all about the nightmares. They had been happening less and less lately, and it was because of her. She knows all about them because of the nights I'd wake up and she'd wake up and she'd hold me and soothe me until I either went back to sleep or we ended up having sex because I needed to feel alive.

Michelle once told me that I was the first man who ever actually made love to her. She believes that having sex and making love are two different things. I didn't believe her until about a month ago.

She doesn't reply to me. All she does is she draws me closer to her and she holds me and she whispers to me, "I'm here. I'm here and I'm not going anywhere. Go to sleep and if you wake up, I'll be here. I'll be right here."

"I can't," I said. "It's all my fault."

"It's not your fault," she said. "Don't start blaming yourself for something you have no control over."

"It  _is_  my fault," I insisted.

"How? Did you go back to New York and force him to swallow sixteen sleeping pills?"

I couldn't look at her. "No," I admitted. "But I left. He hates me. He hates me because I left."

"No, he doesn't," she said. "He doesn't hate you. He thinks he hates you. He's only angry that you left."

Michelle was saying the right things and it sounded like she knew what she was talking about. "How do you know all this?" I asked her.

"I just know," she said, after a moment's hesitation. "And how do you know that if you had stayed, he still wouldn't have done this?"

"He wouldn't have," I insisted.

I could feel her eyes on me, and it forced me to look up at her instead of the floor. "Dan," she said gently. "He had his family there with him and he did it anyway. He's known them longer than he's known you. You have to stop blaming yourself for this."

Michelle was pleading with me. I could hear it in her voice. I didn't answer. I couldn't answer. I couldn't think of anything else to do but take another drink.

"He made a choice," she continued. "He decided to kill his pain permanently. When I wanted to kill the pain, I got drunk, I got high, or I got laid. And I did it because it made me feel good for a little bit. That need to feel better was part of what drove me to do those things. Just like you trying to get drunk right now. You decided to do that."

She was making sense, but it didn't make me feel much better. I still felt guilty as hell. I was trying to kill the pain. I saw her do the same thing when she tried to kill the pain. Was pain ever so bad that it would make someone consider taking their own life to make the hurting stop? I know I hurt, but there were good times, too, and I wanted more of those. I strove to have those. Like Thanksgiving, at that park, and later that night. That was something I held on to for dear life. The memory of that one day.

As if she could read my mind, and I swear that she can, Michelle went on. "Some people think that it's the only way to make things better, so they decide to do it, because whatever is hurting them is so bad, so unbearable, killing themselves seems to be the only solution."

"How do you know about all this?" I asked her again. Did she go to a shrink while she was in Denver? "You seem so sure about this."

I saw her hesitate and I saw the flicker of sadness go across her face. Did someone she knew do this?

"I was in your friend's shoes at one time," she said.

I was floored. She tried to do this too? When? Was this before she met me or after she met me?

Michelle wouldn't say anything else on the subject.

I couldn't believe this. Michelle had tried to do the same thing, too.

 

* * *

 

 

**Michelle**

**8 a.m.**

Dan crashed around four, passing out in my lap. It must be the day for sleeping in other people's laps, because I woke up with my head in his. It was different to have my head in some guy's lap and not be giving him a quick, anonymous, drugged up blow job. It was also different to have some guy's head in my lap and I still had my pants on. But Dan wasn't "some guy".

I don't know what to call him. Boyfriend seems too cute, and according to all the movies and such, I think he's supposed to ask me first if I want to be his girlfriend and then we go "steady". But who goes steady when you're over college age anyway?

Lover is what you use to shock people. I did that to Mary once, when I was about nineteen or so, when I dropped in on those occasions to let her know that I was alive. Mary thinks that the answer to all my problems is if I get married and have kids. She had casually asked me if I were "going steady" with anyone and I talked about this guy I had a one night stand with and I referred to him as my "lover". I watched Mary turn several shades of red at that remark and I tried so hard not to snicker. Lover is one of those words that just screams, "Yes, I'm having sex with this person. Naked, sweaty, illicit, pre-marital sex with the lights on."

Technically, that's what Dan is, but he's so much more than that to me. It's almost like he knows me better than I know myself.

I only dozed for the past four hours. It's hard to sleep sitting up and my neck had a kink in it. And I couldn't sleep anymore anyway, since the sun was out and the light streamed into the cabin, making it very bright and impossible to sleep. Dan was dead to the world, and hopefully he was so out of it, he wasn't having thoughts of any kind.

I shouldn't have let him drink like he was last night, but he had started before I woke up. He was going to have one hell of a hangover this morning. It was a blessing and a curse at the same time. If he hadn't drank anything, he'd still be stubbornly trying to stay awake right now.

My head hurt and I was wanting coffee in the worst way, but I didn't know how to extract myself from the couch to go and make some. The TV was still on, showing some locally produced, pre-recorded holiday show featuring the high school choirs of the greater part of western Nebraska. Gering High was on right now. I saw some kid in the choir who resembled a guy I once went out with, a guy I thought I was in love with, until he persuaded me into the backseat of his car, got what he was after, and dumped me. I was sixteen when that happened.  He wasn't the first person who did this.  He was just one of many.

I heard a knock on the door. Now I had to get up and I had to do it without waking up Dan. He needed to sleep and he needed it badly. I did it the best I could, thinking that if my asshole brother came around to pick a fight, now was not a good time.

It was my asshole brother's wife. Mary held a box in her arms. I wasn't going to let her in. She didn't need to see Dan passed out on the couch.

"Michelle?" she said. Evidently, I was the last person she expected to see. "When did you get here?"

"Last night," I said. I was going to leave it at that, but Mary was waiting for an explanation. "It was late when I got here, and I didn't want to disturb you."

It was cold out. I didn't put my coat on in my haste to answer the door and stop the knocking. I crossed my arms over my chest and hugged myself tightly to warm up.

"Where's Dan?" she asked me, and I could tell she was wondering how on Earth I knew him.

"Sleeping," I said.

"Is it okay if I put this inside?" she asked. I think she was wondering if we slept in the same bed. No, Mary. We slept on the same couch. Fully clothed. Is that good enough for you?

"It's not a good idea," I said. I just wanted her to hand me the box and leave. I was freezing, grungy, tired, I had a wicked kink in my neck, and going through caffeine withdrawals and I just wanted to get back inside and take care of all of those things.

Mary had the impression that I was trying to cover something up. I could almost see her mind conjuring up images of me feeding LSD to Dan by the handful and then having all kinds of kinky sex with the lights on and in any position other than flat on my back. Kinky, trippy sex with my lover. She doesn't know that I never liked LSD.

"Why not?" she persisted.

"Because it's not." I tried what Dan did and I looked down at the steps, my eyes fixating on a small clump of snow that had turned icy. I might as well level with her. "Dan called his uncle last night and he got some bad news."

"Oh that poor boy!" she exclaimed in a tone that middle aged women use in the hair salon when they're gossiping. Mary was only thirty-two, but she acted like she was fifty. "I hope he's okay."

"He didn't want to go to sleep last night," I said. "He finally crashed around four."

"Then I won't go inside," she said, shifting the box in her arms. "I brought over some leftovers for him from last night. And there's a present for him, too. I have a present for you, but it's in the house. The key to the house is also in here, but since you're here now, Michelle, I'll leave it with you." She gave me a pointed look and I knew what that meant. As long as I was here, just like every other time I returned here, I was expected to stay in the main house. It wasn't going to happen and she was just going to have to deal with it. She was just going to have to deal with the fact that I was going to stay in the cabin with Dan, and if that made her imagine he and I having all sorts of wild, drugged up, illicit, pre-marital sex, then that was her problem. It's not my problem that Dick still chases skirts around instead of chasing her skirt around the house. But the women he chases around are all my age or younger now. Sad, really. I doubt that Mary even knows he does this. I know he does this because for one, people talk, and two, because he chased the skirt of some eighteen year old in the hotel I was living in two weeks ago. I saw them together in the bar and I saw them leave together, and she was hanging all over him. The hotel was hosting a cattlemen's convention. It was all I could do not to run up to her and say, "You want to fuck this middle aged guy with a big gut and a wife and two kids back home?" It was all I could do not to make myself be seen by Dick.  If he saw me, his ass was mine, because I would have something on him.

I took the box from Mary. "Are you going away?" I asked her.

"To my mother's. Dick and the kids are in the car waiting for me. We'll be back on the third." Mary's mother lived in Cheyenne.

"Have a safe trip," I said.

"Thanks. Tell Dan I said Merry Christmas." She started walking down the steps. She stopped, and then turned. "Merry Christmas to you, too, Michelle."

"Merry Christmas to you, too."

I took the box into the house and I put all the food in the refrigerator. Dan wasn't on the couch, but the bathroom door was closed and I could hear him in there puking his guts out.

I hunted around for the coffee pot and started making coffee. Then I remembered that I hadn't taken my pill yet for today, so I did that. God forbid I get pregnant. That's the last thing I need right now. I don't even want to imagine the kind of kid I would have with me being his or her mother. I am convinced that back when I was in high school, the town of Harrisburg set up a betting pool for when it was I would eventually get knocked up. I had a reputation. I still have one. Too bad that most of these people who would take part in that are losing money big time on me.

I take that back.  I'm not sorry at all.  Serves them right.

Dan looked tired and very hungover when he finally came out of the bathroom. He flopped down on the couch. The coffee was still perking, so I went to sit next to him.

"Morning," I said, kissing him on the cheek. It dawned on me that this was the first time since I got here that there was any type of kiss at all.

"Morning," he mumbled, still half asleep. "You making coffee?" He looked at the TV and then he made a face at the Gering High School Choir.

"Yeah," I replied. "You want some?" He nodded. This was weird. This whole scene was so...so...domestic. Domestic with a twist, at any rate.

"Who was at the door?" he asked.

He heard the knock?

"I saw you standing outside and it looked like you were talking to someone," he explained.

"Mary," I said. "She dropped off some food."

"Don't say food," he grimaced while turning slightly green.

"Sorry," I apologized. I got up to check on the coffee. It was finished. I pulled two cups from the cupboard. "How do you want it?" I called over my shoulder.

"Black," he said. I poured the coffee and then brought both cups over.

"Mary has it in her head that I'm going to actually stay at the main house," I told him. "She left the house key with me. I'd sleep with the horses before I stayed under the same roof with my brother."

"But then I'd get lonely," he joked.

He's cracking jokes. This is good. This is very good. It's much better than last night. He looked like crap, but he seemed to feel better. He took a drink of the coffee and told me it was good, and I smiled.

"I was sort of hoping you'd stay right here with me," he said. "I'm glad you are."

There was no question in my mind where I would stay. None at all. But there were other things, too, things that I had to say. "You do realize that we're going to catch a lot of hell for shacking up," I said.

"I know," he replied. "I don't give a shit." He put his arm around my shoulders.

"Neither do I," I said. 

* * *

 

**Dan**

I was glad, so glad to know that Michelle had every intention of staying in this cabin with me, and I didn't have to ask her. And it was true, I didn't give a shit what other people thought about the two of us "shacking up", as she put it. If people were going to give us hell over it, I'd gladly deal with them if it meant having her with me.

She spoke again. "You also realize that this means that we're going to catch a lot of hell regardless of where I'm sleeping. Mostly from my brother."

My boss is such an idiot. "Why is that?" I asked her.

"Because he's convinced that you're a saint and I'm only going to corrupt you," she replied.

I had to laugh out loud at the notion of someone corrupting me. I had been corrupted a long time ago. I remember the first day of my corruption very well. I was thirteen and trying to get into the gang, and part of that involved me having sex with this girl named Sophia, who seemed positively ancient to me, even though she was only nineteen. I was corrupted the first time I ever mugged someone. Then a part of my soul was corrupted because of the war. So the notion of me being corrupted at the age of twenty-four by an ex-hippie/groupie was rather funny.

"Your brother is an idiot," I said.

"My brother has selective vision," Michelle replied. "He only sees what he wants to see, and as far as he's concerned, you're the son he wishes he had. I'm surprised he hasn't made you get a haircut yet."

"If he does, I won't do it," I said. The length of my hair has nothing to do with what kind of worker I am. I've always worn my hair a little longer than everyone else, even when I was in high school. I hated having it cut off when I went into the Army. And I think Michelle likes it the way it is, so I'm not going to cut it short.

"Good," she smiled. "I like it just the way it is."

I knew it.

Despite the fact that my head felt like there was someone inside letting out the most ear-splitting, piercing scream known to man, I was actually feeling pretty good. And I didn't want this good feeling to stop. Ever. I'd take just having it for today, if that's what it came to.

A few hours later, Michelle went to take a shower and I was so tempted to join her. But I didn't. Instead, I sat on the couch and tried to ignore the screaming in my head. My stomach still felt queasy, so aspirin was out of the question right now. I had images of her in my head, images of her naked and wet and soapy. These images were having an effect on me. One month was far too long.

A part of my brain told me that it was wrong to be thinking about these things right now, in light of what I found out yesterday. I didn't want to think about what I'd found out yesterday. Not now. I could think about it tomorrow. If that made me selfish, I didn't care. What Mart tried to do to himself was pretty selfish. So if he could be selfish, I could be selfish, too.

Mart was being a selfish bastard. Didn't he ever stop and think about his family? Or the fact that it just may have been his little brother who found him? And what if Bobby had come in later and found his brother in bed, dead? Nobody should ever have to find a dead body. Especially a kid.

I'm going to stop thinking about this. I'm going to make myself stop thinking about this and I'm going to think of something else. Like Michelle in the shower. That's it. I'm going to think about her in the shower and if that makes me either get off the couch and join her or I come in my pants on this couch, then so be it.

A little later, after I had taken a shower, I decided to give her her present. It was sitting under the small, fake tree perched on the card table. I think the box was bigger than that damn tree. I went up to Scottsbluff one day and picked it out, although it seemed like a woefully inadequate thing to give her. You can't buy the world in a department store.

She took the box from me and started to open it. She's not a "ripper", I noticed. She doesn't rip right into packages. She opens them carefully, as if she were savoring the anticipation. She got the paper off, the wrapping paper I paid an extra fifty cents to have someone else put on, because I can't wrap presents worth shit. Then she opened the box and pulled out the deep blue sweater I bought. I picked it out because it's the exact shade of blue as her eyes. Those same blue eyes I get lost in.

"If it doesn't fit," I said. "You can take it back." I guessed at the size. It never occurred to me last November to slip out of bed, grab her clothes off the floor, and check the tags for what size she wore.

"I'm sure it will fit," she said. "It's very pretty." She folded the sweater back up and set it inside the box. Then she leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. "Thank you." I felt all warm inside.

Then she got up and started rummaging around in the boxes piled up by the opposite wall. "I've got something for you, too," she said. She found it and brought over a rectangular, flat package. "I didn't know what size you wear," she began. I guess it never occurred to her to slip out of bed, grab my clothes, and check the tags for the size I wore, either. "And I didn't know what records you had," she continued. "So I decided to go with this, instead." She handed me the package and I started opening it. I'm not a "ripper" either. I think for me, it's because it's not the epitome of "cool" to rip things open and I had a reputation to keep up. Dan the Man, the cool one.

Inside the package was a framed photograph of me and Michelle. I remember when it was taken. It was in Denver, and she had her camera, and she accosted someone just passing by and asked if they wouldn't mind taking our picture. The picture turned out very well, I could see. "When did you do this?" I asked her.

"After I got the film developed," she said. "I had them enlarge this one. You like it?"

I did. It was a nice picture. We looked happy. It was taken during a time when I was feeling good, when there was something over me, over both us, keeping the demons away. "Yes," I said. "I like it." I leaned over and kissed her. It felt good to kiss her.

"You want to open your other one?" she asked me. I nodded and she handed me a soft package. When I opened that one, I pulled out a very long scarf that was knitted with variegated yarn. It was pink, green, and white. The pink and the green were very bright. Michelle started laughing when she saw it. I couldn't say anything.

"At least you'll be easy to spot in a blizzard," she said. "Although I think it's long enough, I could hang on to it from one end while you go outside."

"Ha, ha," I said, sarcastically. I guess it's the thought that counts.

"Be thankful Mary didn't decide to crochet you a beer can hat to match," Michelle chuckled. Then she stopped. "I'm almost afraid to find out what she got me."

"Where is yours?" I asked. I didn't remember seeing any more packages around.

"At the main house," she said. "We can go up there later. Then I can show you my room, too."

"Your room?" I asked.

"My bedroom. The one that they expect me to stay in." She gave me this saucy look. "You'll be the first one I ever showed my room to, you know." She said it sort of jokingly, but I felt somewhat honored to know that I was the first one she ever brought to her room. Even if she wasn't staying there.

And later, we did go up to the main house, walking there hand in hand. Before she unlocked the door, she slid her arms around my neck and she kissed me and I reveled in the taste of her. She tasted so good and I missed the taste of her, the feel of her lips moving against mine, and the way she seemed to melt right into me when she kissed me. I needed this. I needed her.

It turned out that Michelle should have been afraid of what Mary gave her for Christmas. When she opened the package, Michelle pulled out an older book, the title stamped in gold letters on a red binding.

"I should have known," she groaned. "I should have known."

"What?" I asked her. She held up the book and made a face. The book was one of those books on how to get and keep a husband, and it looked like it had been written in the Fifties.

"Gee," she said sarcastically. "You think Mary's trying to tell me something?" She started thumbing through the book. She wrinkled her nose at it and did it in a way that I thought was kind of cute.

"Could be worse," I said. "You could have gotten a matching scarf."

"Very funny," she said. She threw the book on the coffee table. "Come on," she said. "I'll show you my room."

The few times I was ever in the main house, it was limited to the kitchen and the living room. She led me upstairs and down a hallway to the last door on the right. Michelle's room looked like it probably had looked back in '67. The walls were covered with blue and white flowered wall paper, which she had tried to hide by tacking posters on her walls. There were a lot of posters there. Posters and pictures of the Beatles graced one entire wall. The others held an assortment of band posters and concert posters. The furniture was all oak. Even the bookshelf. The bookshelf held a bunch of paperbacks, including a few pulp novels, a photo album, a few high school year books, and sixteen Lucy Radcliffe books. The Lucy books made me think of Trixie.

"You read those?" I asked her, pointing at the Lucy Radcliffe books.

"Yeah," she said. "I wanted to be her when I was a kid."

The bookshelf also held a few record albums and a small box that held 45's. Michelle began leafing through the records. "That's where this one went," she said, pulling out a Jimi Hendrix album. She took the record from its jacket and put it on the stereo. Then she grabbed a photo album. "Want to see what I looked like when I was a kid?" She sat down on the bed, waiting for me to come over and see it. Jimi started asking us if we were experienced.

I went over to sit next to her on the twin bed. She gave the book to me and let me look at it. I saw pictures of her and her parents, and she had been right. Michelle looked like her mother. I saw her dressed up and I saw her in her pajamas on Christmas. I saw her with teeth missing and with pigtails and she looked so happy. I saw a picture of the entire family. Michelle standing in front of her parents and her brother, looking thinner and having more hair, standing slightly apart from the three of them. Dick, I could see, took after his father more in looks, but Michelle's father looked happier and kinder than Dick does.

After that picture, her parents were no longer in the photo album. In every picture after, there was this sadness about her, this lingering, haunting sadness in her eyes that stayed, despite her smiling. She seemed to only be smiling to hide the sadness, but you could still see it there. I knew that same kind of sadness. I had a few pictures of me where I smiled to try and hide the sadness. I saw her in those images branded to slick paper, grow up and it seemed that she had decided to stop trying to hide the sadness. In one picture, a picture of her at seventeen wearing a bridesmaid's dress, she had this sullen, boxed-in expression on her face. After that, the pictures were few, and she was smiling again, but the smile was artificially created by whatever it was she had taken before the picture was snapped.

Looking at these pictures of her was almost like looking at myself. I had pictures of myself, left back in New York, where I had the same sad look, except mine went in degrees depending on whether or not the picture was taken after my father died or after my mother died. Those pictures also reminded me that Michelle never got the second chance like I did. She told me once that her brother was only supposed to take care of her until an older, more responsible relative could be found and she would go and live with them. They couldn't find one. Her parents had been in their late forties when they died. Her grandmother had been in her seventies or eighties and too old to take care of an eight year old.  She had an aunt, a single woman in her thirties, who couldn't take her in, either.  I got that second chance and had friends and a better life, but it wasn't the same as having your parents around. There are times in your life when you wish that they were here to experience the things that you accomplished, like graduating from high school. I wish my parents were still around so they could meet Michelle. I think that they would like her. There are times in your life when you long to have them around because you need them and you need their advice.

My heart cried out at the sadness I saw, because I didn't want her to be sad in the pictures and I didn't want her to be sad now. But I understood the reason why she was sad. And I started to understand this complex woman named Michelle O' Brien, whom I loved very, very much. Her brother tended to view things in black and white. It either is or it isn't. In his mind, his sister was this person who did what he thought were bad things because she was a bad person. It wasn't black and white. Michelle was many, many different shades of gray. She was a good person who got lost and did things people thought were bad. Like I did. And now, it seemed she was trying to find her way back. Like me.

The rest of the photo album was empty. That sadness I saw reminded me of something she'd said last night, about once being in Mart's shoes and about hurting so badly that killing yourself seemed to be the only way to make the hurt stop. I didn't know if I should ask her about this, because I got the distinct impression that there was more to this, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to know it. But it felt like I had to know because maybe that was the key to understanding what happened with Mart.

Michelle was resting her head on my shoulder when I closed the photo album. I put the book aside and I put my arm around her and pulled her closer to me. "Maybe I should call my uncle back and ask him to send all the pictures of me so you can see them." I kissed the top of her head. She just smiled.

I had to ask her, though. I had to know. We sat in silence, while I worked up the nerve to ask her. It took about ten minutes to work up that nerve. And I decided to say it before I chickened out. Too bad this didn't work when I wanted to tell her that I love her.

"Last night," I began. "When you said that you were once in Mart's shoes, was that true?"

Michelle didn't answer me right away. She was thinking about it, and before she finally spoke, she bowed her head for a few seconds and then raised it to look at me and she had tears in her eyes.

"Three weeks before I met you," she said in this quiet, controlled voice. "I was in Portland. I locked myself in the bathroom with a straight razor and I tried to slit my wrists because I couldn't take it anymore."

I was going to ask her why, but I decided to let her talk, just as she had let me talk last night.

She continued. "I was sick of hurting and being hurt, using and being used. I was looking for something and I realized that I was probably never going to find it because I didn't deserve to have it. I already felt dead inside and I was sick of that, too.  I didn't think that anyone cared whether I was alive or dead, so I decided to kill myself." I saw a tear slip down her face. I wanted to reach out and wipe it away, but I was too absorbed in her words and I couldn't move.

"I locked myself in the bathroom and I held that straight razor I swiped from someone in my hand and the entire time I sat on the toilet and I cried. But I couldn't do it. I got that razor to my wrist, and I had it pressed up against my wrist, but I couldn't press it hard enough to cut me. I couldn't do it."

"Why couldn't you do it?" I asked her.

"I don't know," she said. "At first I thought that maybe whichever one of the Fates was in charge of this decided I hadn't been punished enough. But now, I think it's something else, because the next day, I left Portland and I wandered around for two and a half weeks and the next thing I knew I was back here. And then I met you.

"I think that Fate decided that I wasn't supposed to die because I was supposed to meet you and fall in love with you and then everything would be all right."

I didn't think that Michelle was a big believer in Fate, either. But here she was saying that it was Fate that stopped her from taking her own life because Fate had decided that she was supposed to meet me and fall in love with me...

She loves me. Michelle loves me! Me. Michelle O' Brien loves me! This beautiful goddess sitting next to me, someone whose space I am not worthy of being in, loves  _me_. She said it. I heard her say it. I wanted to jump up and down and then grab her and hug her and kiss her for saying the words that have just made me the happiest man on Earth. She feels the same way about me as I do about her.

I had to play it cool, though. Dan the Man had to be cool. "Is that why you decided to stay?" I heard myself asking her.

"Yes," she said. "I had been getting tired of the road anyway and I was looking for a reason to leave. After I met you, I had one. I had somewhere to go and someone to go to." Then she straightened up and looked me right in the eye. "I meant what I said, Dan. I love you."

 

**Michelle**

I decided that I wasn't going to say those three words until I heard it first because I had to be sure that Dan felt the same way about me as I did about him. I didn't want to risk getting my heart kicked around yet again. But somehow, they slipped out and then he acted like he didn't hear it and I had to say it again. I hadn't intended on telling anyone that I had tried to commit suicide, either. That was something I wanted to stay in the past. But I think that my telling Dan helped him understand a little better why his friend did what he did.

But now, I was sitting here, completely vulnerable, and waiting for him to either laugh in my face or say the same thing back to me and the waiting was unbearable. It didn't help much when he pulled me against him and said nothing.

Are you going to tell me or are you going to let me down? I waited while Jimi sang to his waterfall asking her to fall with him for a million days and I could hear Dan breathing and I could hear myself breathing.  And then he spoke.

"I love you, too."

I felt such a surge of joy and of relief and wonder all at the same time. I knew that no matter what happened from now on, everything would be all right because I had Dan and Dan loved me. And having that, I could get through anything. We could get through anything because we loved each other and we would be together. As Lennon and McCartney once said, "Love is all you need."

I looked up at him because I felt I had to stay something. "Oh Dan..." was all I could say.

I didn't have to say anything else. I didn't need to say anything else. He stilled my words with a kiss, a long, deep kiss that seemed to go on forever. A kiss that was made sweeter just by knowing that he was kissing me because he loved me. When I parted my lips, his tongue slid inside, probing, exploring, tasting me and letting me taste him.

When the kiss broke, he whispered to me, "I want to make love to you." I couldn't say anything. The only thing I could do was to lie down on the bed and pull him along with me.

When he kissed me and touched me and explored me, time seemed to stand still and the world disappeared. Nothing existed except him and me and the bed. Kissing him and being kissed, touching him and being touched by him seemed spiritual, reverential. It was knowing that you were touched because you were loved and wanted and cherished and needed and the one touching you loved you, wanted you, cherished you, and needed you.

I felt him filling me and it was a welcome feeling. We ceased to exist as two individual people, instead becoming one being. It was no longer Michelle and Dan, rather MichelleandDan. I could feel my very soul intertwining with his and I knew that's the way it would be from now on.

Eventually, time resumed moving and the rest of the world came back and Dan was lying on top of me, breathing as hard as I was, and he was still inside me and my legs were still wrapped around him and he stroked my hair and he whispered to me, "I love you, Michelle" before he kissed me again, slowly and lovingly.

I found the word. I know what to call him now. Soulmate.

* * *

**Dan**

**Monday, December 25, 1973  
7 pm**

Twenty-four hours ago, I called my uncle. I was going to call him again. If he had more to tell me about Mart, I could hear it. I could handle it. I could handle it because Michelle was sitting next to me and I knew that she would be with me for a long, long time.

We were back in the cabin and Michelle brought that book she got from Mary with her and she was reading parts of it out loud and snickering at them. "I think I'm going to get Mary a copy of 'The Feminine Mystique' for her birthday," she said.

I didn't do anything other than smile at her and kiss her because I can't seem to get enough of kissing her.

When I told her I was going to call my uncle again, she looked concerned, but I assured her that it was okay and I would be okay. I told her I wanted to ask him to send the things I left in New York out here, too. I didn't tell her that maybe it was time to let Uncle Bill know where I was and give him my number and address. I wasn't ready to go back to New York and I didn't want to go back to New York, either. I couldn't cut myself off from the rest of the world anymore.

When I finally told Michelle I loved her, the words came a little easier than I thought they would. Maybe it was because she said it first and knowing that she felt the same way about me made it easier for me to open myself up and say it to her. I still am not sure what to call her, though. She's above any label and the words I could use do not do her justice at all. Michelle is more than a friend, more than a confidant, more than a lover. Girlfriend just isn't enough.

Soulmate. That's the word I was looking for.

As I picked up the phone, Michelle put the book down and rested her head on my shoulder. I dialed the number, and then while I heard ringing on the other end, I put my arm around her and held her close to me.

"Uncle Bill? It's Dan."

 

**the end**

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally written and posted online in late September of 2002. I had so many author's notes in the original, that it got its own page. :) 
> 
> Thank you for the anonymous person who left kudos on the other stories. It means a lot. :)


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